Verbing Weirds Language only if you're expecting it to work in a simple way. This is a special case of the more general truth that Language Weirds.

Only when a republic's life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it is in the wrong. There is no other time.

The church says Earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence in a shadow than the church.

If we can't find Heaven, there are always bluejays.

Sunday, November 23, 2014

The Week in Entertainment

DVD: Some of Scott & Bailey season 3. I'm not crazy about the "moment of jeopardy-cut to months earlier" frame, but the through story (I'm assuming) with the horrible family is quite engrossing.

TV: The Sky TV adaptation of The Colour of Magic (which includes The Light Fantastic), rather well cast and made - enjoyable, indeed. The Lego Movie, which I'd managed to miss before and which I found enormously entertaining. November Christmas, which I watched because Sam Eliot is in it, but was - even for Hallmark - full of glurge. Worst of all, the story was about a town coming together to make Christmas come early for a little girl with cancer but - just in case the fact that it was on Hallmark wasn't enough - they got rid of all possible tension by having the girl narrating as a grownup! Also caught up on The Middle and Modern Family, both of which were good, and Grimm, in which I'm glad to see that Nick at least realized he would have to move to a different city if he didn't get his powers back. If the spell works (and really, they're not going to give him powers back? What kind of show would they have?) it's going to be a good thing that FBI agent "knows" he's not a Grimm...

Read: The Dinosaur Feather, a very good Danish novel about murder among scientists. The last two Julian Kestrel novels. I liked them all, but the last one was a tiny bit contrived and the whole Italian setting bugged me for some reason. Still, it was an enjoyable series.

2 Comments:

I haven't seen the _Colour of Magic_ adaptation. I remember thinking when it was announced that casting David Jason as Rincewind was heresy -- how can Rincewind be an old person? -- but otherwise I don't know much about it.

As for the other Discworld adaptations, we've discussed _Hogfather_ before, and frankly, what they did to _Going Postal_ was immoral. Moist von Lipwig obviously has his faults, but NOTHING can excuse turning him into the kind of man who thinks it's acceptable to force a woman to dance with him. I haven't seen Terry (or Rhianna!) comment on this, but "rage-inducing" would be my adjective of choice. (I can't comment further because I've done my best to eradicate the whole thing from my memory.)

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About Me

I used to teach Russian and Ukrainian, and some basic English, to civil servants. Now I teach Russian at a local continued-learning institute. I dabble in Gaelic and Welsh. I'm am amateur photographer and I love birding (in a small way). I'm a Progressive, and a Freethinker, and I know Evolution is a fact - that's FCD, Friend of Charles Darwin (look down the sidebar). I read a lot, and follow women's college basketball. Also I love astronomy, though I'm a rank amateur at it. Most of all, I like living in the reality-based community...

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You cannot leave. You cannot drop the armor now. Why? Because you are needed, more than ever. You are mandatory to keep the energy flowing, the karmic vibrator buzzing, to keep the progressive and lucid half of the nation breathing and healthy and awake and ever reaching out to the half that's wallowing in fear and violence and homophobia and sexual dread, hoping to find harmony instead of cacophony, common ground instead of civil war, some sort of a shared love of a country so messy and internationally disrespected and openly confused its own president can't even speak the language.

After all, you don't hand over all your children the first time the flying monkeys bang on your door...

It's far from over. The tunnel is just a little darker -- and longer -- than we imagined.
Mark Morford